Crash & Burn

It was a cold December morning. It was the day I was traveling to my monthly youth ministry cohort gathering. A five-hour drive. I was stressed to get there on time, stressed about my job, but I was excited to get to my cohort. It was frequently the highlight of the month for me. I was about an hour into my trip when I noticed my steering wheel was out of alignment. I tried to correct it. In doing so…I lost control of the car…and before I knew it, I was sliding across two lanes of traffic on the main highway going directly towards a ditch. Luckily…I hit a guardrail. My airbags deployed and I found myself stopped in the middle of the road blocking traffic. My car wouldn’t move. I struggled to open the driver side door and got out…traffic was completely stopped behind me. My car was totaled. A good Samaritan helped push my car into the median and allowed me to stay warm inside his car until the police arrived. I never got his name…I’m forever grateful to him.

The police arrived and took my information. They asked if I was ok. Other than still feeling shocked, I told them I was fine. I called my family, I called my cohort, I called my pastors and agreed on a plan to come back home in a rental car and try to make the trip again the next morning. I only got about halfway back home. I started to feel nauseous. I thought I just needed to go to the bathroom, so I pulled over into a gas station. When I got out of the car, I knew something was wrong. I was dizzy and having a hard time breathing. After taking a few minutes to try and figure out what was going on, I decided to call a friend who was a pastor nearby and asked him to take me the rest of the way back into town…and to the hospital. I’m forever grateful to that friend as well. I would later be told that if I had tried to continue driving…I likely would have fainted behind the wheel. I was admitted to ER, they took some imaging to figure out what was going on. After a few minutes a surgeon came into my ER bed. He looked at me and said, “Sir, you’ve ruptured your spleen and you’ve been bleeding internally. It looks like the bleeding may be slowing…but we’re admitting you to the hospital right now to continue monitoring you in case you need surgery.”

More phone calls were made at that point. I let my cohort know I wasn’t coming. I let my church know I wouldn’t be at work for at least a few days. I let my family know. My wife and daughter found my room and my mom hopped on a plane to be there too. Thankfully, it ended up being not as bad as initially feared. My internal bleeding stopped. The laceration was small and would heal itself. I still ended up staying in the hospital for about a week. Due to some other complications my mobility was affected for a while. The doctor asked that I not drive or do anything active for a month and recommended I stay away from work as well. It was around this time I began to get nervous.

Pastor Donn visited me twice, and an associate pastor came and visited me again after my stay was extended. Each time, whether I was there by myself, with my mother, or my wife and daughter the conversation would start the same. “How are you feeling?” He’d ask. Then, “When will you be able to come back to work?” That question always made me feel uneasy. I couldn’t explain why but it felt…off. I also didn’t have an answer. The doctors did not know the answer at that time…the situation was fluid. I would try to explain that, and I could always tell it did not feel like a satisfactory answer to him. He told me they had filed a workman’s comp claim on my behalf to help with the situation. I didn’t know what all that entailed but thanked him. I remember feeling so stressed in those moments…wanting to satisfy whatever it was he was looking for or wanting…and never feeling like I could.

I spent a month away. I received many well wishes, gifts, words of encouragement, and even a visit or two from my youth. When it came time to get back to work, I was invigorated. I felt like I had been given a fresh start and I was ready to embrace this new outlook on life. My first week back was the first night of youth group after Christmas break. I gave both the Wed night church message, and the high school youth message. At Wednesday night church I spoke of being patient for God’s timing and healing…using my recent experience as illustration. I gave a testimony to my high schoolers about how scary an experience it had been…how it taught me that every day is a gift from God. It was a great night.

The next day when our program staff meeting was concluding, pastor Donn asked me to stay behind after he dismissed the rest of the staff. After they left, he pulled out a manila folder. My heart began to race. He told me in the folder were a couple things. The first was a letter of complaint, about me, written by a parent that he received “while you were away.” He told me he had not only entertained the contents of the letter but had read them to our church’s staffing committee the night before. He said he would not tell me what the complaints were, or who wrote them. He did tell me one line of the letter. He said, “The person who wrote this says that after you left there was no noticeable difference at youth group. That your presence does not make a difference. Do you agree with that?” “No. I don’t,” I replied. He began spouting off complaints he had with me…again. He said he didn’t feel I was passionate about my work…though he acknowledged I had only been back for a week. He told me he was surprised that when I was told about the workman’s comp claim…that my mother (who was in my hospital room with me when I was told) didn’t offer to help with that. “She’s an accountant, not a lawyer…” I said to him. “I know…but she’s a businesswoman. She’s familiar with this kind of stuff…we’ve never had to do anything like this and it’s confusing. I’m not upset…I’m just telling you I was surprised she didn’t offer to help.” I didn’t know what to say. He then pulled out the other sheet he had in the folder. A new list of job expectations. He asked me to sign two copies…one for me and one to give back to the staffing committee. My signature acknowledged I would meet these new expectations. He then told me what he said he had also told the staffing committee, “I have no interest in personally helping you get better at your job or with repairing any fractured relationships.”

He then asked me to go back to my office and think. “Think real hard about the people who are involved at this church but not involved in the youth ministry. Think about who those people could be and what it is they could be upset about and what you’re going to do to fix it.” As I left his office, he made sure to tell me I was on “thin ice.” I did go back to my office and think and look at my new expectations. I called my mentors and asked for help and guidance. I still left the office a little early that day as I had planned to. My parents were in town. It was my daughter’s first birthday.